...At one point, a friend of Mr. Hlava's wife traded a copy of the tape to another Czech immigrant for a bar tab at a pub in Ridgewood, Queens. Mr. Hlava and his brother, Josef, who was also in the S.U.V. on Sept. 11, tried at various times to sell the tape, both in New York and in the Czech Republic. But with little sophistication about the news media and no understanding of the tape's significance, the brothers had no success.

Eventually, a woman happened to learn of the tape from the pub deal at a school where one of the Czech immigrants was studying English. She brought it to the attention of a freelance news photographer who doubled as her ballroom dancing partner, and that man, Walter Karling, brought the tape to The New York Times.